Update: ESO is confirmed to support crossplay on Stadia at launch. This is a much-needed feature that will surely help support the health of the game on Stadia. Hopefully, crossplay will eventually come to Destiny 2 as well.
The Elder Scrolls Online has been revealed as one of the free games for Stadia Pro subscribers next month, but just like Destiny 2, it will not support cross-platform play.
To clarify: both games support cross-save and cross-progression, meaning you can pick up exactly where you left on and keep playing your character, and when you switch back to PC or console you have all the progress you made on Stadia. The problem is that neither game supports cross-play, meaning you can't play Stadia Destiny 2 with your friends while they play on PC.
This causes a number of issues for Stadia players beyond the obvious one: they can't play with their friends. Beyond that, it means that a lot of content is inaccessible. End game activities like dungeons and heroic lost sectors in Destiny 2 and raids in ESO must be done with other players, but if you can't play with your friends, then you're only left with story content and solo grinding. Even the simple task of grinding patrols and strikes can be greatly enhanced with a friend and a chat, but right now, playing Destiny 2 on Stadia can only be played by yourself. I haven't been able to convince my non-early adopter friends to switch over to Stadia, and to be h🗹onest, I don't really think they should. Atleast not for 1 game anyway.
It also has the effect of making the world feel entirely too empty. According to stat tracking app Charlemagne, Destiny 2 on Stadia accounts for just 1% of the total popul🔥ation. Player counts around 5,000 make it very difficult to queue for activities like strikes and crucible. Even current content like Seraph Tower public events, which require at least 3 high-level players to do, almost never have any players participating in.
To make matters worse, Destiny 2 on Stadia has no chat features. There is push to talk if you're in a party, but outside of that, there's no way to have a conversation with people in the Tower. Even if you wanted to meet some strangers and try to start a group for a raid, you can't. The only option is finding a group on an outside LFG like a Discord server, but good luck finding other Stadia playerꦆs that need to do the exact same activity as you.
We don't yet know what kind of chat and matchmaking capabilities ESO will have when it launches next month, but if it's anything like Destiny 2 it will seriously impede player's ability to engage with the game's content. Cross-play is a sore spot for a lot of players, but in the case of Stadia, it needs to happen for the platform to survive. I use Stadia to play Destiny 2 e🎃xclusively on my phone while lying in bed, and even then, it would be nice to at least have enough players🦂 around for a public event from time to time.